The San Diego chapter of the U.S. Naval Academy Association will let a controversial speaker keynote the group’s Wednesday luncheon.

That’s triggering a protest outside the Dave and Buster's restaurant in Mission Valley by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group advocating for Muslim civil rights.

The speaker, John Guandolo, is a former FBI agent and Marine Corps officer who has made controversial statements about CAIR and Muslims.

The San Diego chapter of the U.S. Naval Academy Association is pressing ahead with a planned Wednesday luncheon featuring a firebrand speaker who has been called a racist by the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights group.

Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said by phone Tuesday that his advocacy group has urged the alumni organization to drop “Islamaphobe” John Guandolo, a 1989 graduate of the Naval Academy as well as a former Marine officer and FBI agent.

“He’s a guy who claimed that cabbies and 7-11 employees were trying to take over America. He called a CIA director a ‘secret Muslim’ — not that there’s anything wrong with being a Muslim. He’s even said that mosques are stockpiling weapons to conduct armed attacks on local churches,” Hooper said.

An online message placed with Guandolo’s Dallas-based organization, Understanding the Threat, was not returned.

The luncheon is slated to begin at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday at theDave and Buster's restaurant in Mission Valley.

Retired Navy Capt. Craig Smith, the president of the San Diego chapter of the alumni association, said that he was not authorized to speak on the matter but referred the Union-Tribune to a board director, Randy “Boom Boom” Bogle, a retired Navy officer and a former commandant of the Naval Academy.

The executive director of the San Diego Military Advisory Council, Bogle said that Smith informed the board about his decision to let Guandolo talk but insisted that the Navy, Naval Academy, SDMAC and the alumni group did not endorse the speaker’s message.

“The alumni association tries to have a variety of speakers and this speaker’s appearance in no way should be viewed as an endorsement of his views,” said Bogle, adding that he hoped the alumni’s members would “separate the wheat from the chaff” by asking Guandolo pointed questions.

He said that he likely would not go to the event but declined to say if he advised other alumni group members to avoid the luncheon.

CAIR’s Hooper said he’s tired of hearing “that excuse trotted out.”

”Then why not invite neo-Nazis and white supremacists? He’s one of the nation’s leading personalities bashing Muslims and you’re giving him a forum to spread that,” he said.

It’s not the first time CAIR has challenged Guandolo’s appearances. In January, CAIR successfully prodded Tennesse-based Trevecca Nazarene University to nix a Guandolo presentation.

Guandolo resigned from the FBI in 2008 after being accused of forging a romantic relation with a top government witness in the corruption case against Louisiana Democratic ex-congressman William J. Jefferson.

In a Feb. 15 posting on its website, Understanding the Threat labeled CAIR a “Hamas organization” that was tied to the Palestinian terrorist organization.

It attacked federal agencies and the board of the San Diego Unified School District for working with CAIR and called reporters “Marxist accomplices in the media” for attempting to smear Guandolo and his group.

Guandolo’s organization called on President Donald Trump to “dismantle CAIR.”